A new ghost kitchen near California State University Sacramento is ready for operations, and its first restaurant users are expected to begin operating within the next month.
The Line, located at 6415 Elvas Ave., includes 11 commercial kitchens inside a 5,045-square-foot building. The concept allows food industry operators to rent out a space to provide to-go and delivery services.
The individual users must provide kitchen equipment, while most everything else is provided by the facility, including utilities, front-of-house services, janitorial services, other infrastructure needs and an online ordering platform.
So far, three tenants have signed leases to operate out of 200-square-foot kitchen suites at the facility, which include sushi restaurant Kru Contemporary Japanese Cuisine, Cuban-Mexican-Latin food truck operator Gondo Fusion, and hot chicken restaurant Nash & Proper.
Adam Ono, general manager of The Line, said the facility offers flexible leases that generally require a minimum of one year to sign on, with monthly rates around $4,000. In addition to the current tenants, Ono said two others are expected to sign leases in the coming months.
"We really want to be a resource for people trying to build something larger, open their second or third locations, or just grow their current business," Ono said. "This is for people who want to come in and have a commercial kitchen facility who, say, don't have a half-million dollars to remodel a traditional restaurant and pay for things like front-of-house-staff and insurance."
Look inside The Line
Ono said construction and retrofitting of the facility cost roughly $2.4 million. Sutter Capital bought the property in May 2021 for $1.425 million.
The Line's online ordering system allows customers to mix and match their orders from the various restaurant tenants. The food is then either delivered to them using a third-party service or can be picked up from a to-go window at the facility. A walk-up window will also have QR codes for each kitchen that allow customers to order food on-site.
Ono said The Line expects a big part of its business to be from Sac State students. The facility is near the college and will benefit from a pedestrian walkway that leads directly from campus to the commercial kitchen.
Kru, which will be running all of its restaurant's to-go orders out of facility, is likely to be the first to begin operating, followed by Gondo Fusion. Nash & Proper is expected to begin operating closer to November, Ono said.
"Right now we are just waiting for a few health department permits for the individual kitchens. The building itself has already passed, but each kitchen has to move in their own equipment that must also pass," he said. "I would expect them to be operating by the end of September."
The Line's ownership group recently purchased an adjacent property just north of the commercial kitchen facility that they plan to convert into a beer garden. Ono said the next phase of the development, which they hope to establish within the next 12 to 18 months, would provide a place for customers to sit, eat and drink at the site.
"We are concentrating on this project first, but eventually we would like to see more of these (facilities) expand throughout Sacramento County and into the Bay Area," Ono said.
Ghost kitchens are an emerging trend in the restaurant industry as they allow food businesses to serve customers at a lower cost compared to the traditional brick-and-mortar route. The concept grew during the pandemic, as restaurants were forced to limit their dine-in service and more consumers ordered home-delivered meals.
Similar ghost kitchen concepts are in the works throughout the area, including a Midtown Sacramento location being spearheaded by Los Angeles-based Maker Kitchens, and a Folsom Boulevard site planned by Miami-based Reef Technology Inc.
